The Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Angelino Alfano, chaired yesterday’s meeting of the Joint Committee for Development Cooperation.
On opening the meeting, Minister Alfano commented the preliminary data on Public Development Aid 2017 released by the OECD: “Italy is among the Countries recording the highest rise in Public Development Aid with the noteworthy amount of 5.7 billion dollars, up 10.2% from 2016. Our Country consolidates its 4th place ranking in percentage terms among the G7 Countries and 6th place among the Member Countries of the Development Assistance Committee in net contributions. These figures confirm the positive consolidation of these last five years’ strong and consistent policy orientation to enhance development aid.”
“We have approved programmes and initiatives comprehensively worth more than 16 million euros addressed to Countries in different geographical areas spanning from Africa to the Middle East, from Asia to Europe,” said Minister Alfano.
He went on: “In the Middle East, bearing witness to the attention that Italy continues to focus on this area, we have passed a resolution to allocate funds for projects in Jordan to support rural development and the employment of youth, both Jordanian and Syrian refugees, in the protection of the archaeological site of Petra; in Lebanon, for vocational training and the re-inclusion of socially marginalised persons; in Palestine, promoting women’s access to the labour market.”
“The 10-million-euro voluntary contribution to the World Bank’s Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund is further confirmation of our commitment towards the stabilization and reconstruction of the Asian Country,” Minister Alfano added.
“The last two financings approved also contribute to corroborating the continuity and reliability of our government’s policies. In fact, we chose to contribute to a project to enhance sustainable tourism in Bosnia-Herzegovina consistently with our commitment to foster the acceleration of the EU accession process of the Balkan Countries; lastly, a few months after my visit to this Country, we have decided to support a programme to improve the birth registration system in Guinea Conakry,” he concluded.
